Jiro comments on Is Scott Alexander bad at math? - Less Wrong

31 Post author: JonahSinick 04 May 2015 05:11AM

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Comment author: Jiro 07 May 2015 04:22:04PM *  0 points [-]

Besides which, by bothering to try to come up with a wholly naturalistic worldview that never resorts to mysticism in the first place, Eliezer is massively ahead of the overwhelming majority of, for example, laypeople and philosophers.

That means that if I just say "space aliens have replaced the President", I'm saying something bad, but if I copy a math textbook, and add a footnote "also, space aliens have replaced the President", I'm saying something good, because the sum total of what I am saying (a lot of good math + one bad thing about aliens) is good. In one sense that's correct; people could certainly learn lots of math from my footnoted math textbook. But we don't generally add these kinds of things together.